Cimory - The Trip

Me and my friends had to be at school earlier because the trip was quite far. We started the trip around 7 in the morning, and it took us around 2 hours to be there. It was great because we went there during weekdays when people do not go to Puncak or Cisarua on that day/hours.

When we first arrived there, we had our introduction with one of Cimory EO, and it was actually my first time to hear what Cimory stands for, I thought Cimory was just a name given by the owner in the past. After a short introduction, we went to see some clips made by Cimory for the visitors about the company, and it was quite surprising that Cimory actually has pretty big expansion since tha last five years period. I did not know that Cimory now has so many branches, such as Chocomory. 

After the introduction session, we had our welcome drink real quick, strawberry milk and I really did not like it. We went to a little cattle pen inside Cimory's property and we got to see some huge ass cows right there. It was a really hot day, I did not expect Puncak would be that hot during that time. The EO introduced how do they cross their cows, which was really disturbing, and I had heard of it when I was still in high school. After some talks about the milk quality and stuff, we finally got some little time to learn how to milk a cow. It was really gross so I decided to wait and see the process in a distance because I had seen this process several times in the past.

We were all hungry and finally, the lunch time that we have waited for hours come. Sadly the food was not good and we decided to get some additional orders because why not? After we had our lunch done, the Q&A session finally came. I had waited for this session to begin because the explaination and the introduction information were not enough for me. In this session, the EO described us how the process of the sterilization process, shipping, etc. It was really good to know this processes as a guarantee their products are amazing because the price of their products are pretty high. 

Before we went back home, they showed us how to make some milkshake and how cheap it actually is to create them. 

Cimory Trip - My Expectation

I had visited Cimory several times in the past with my family to chill when I was still in high school almost four years ago. This visit was not my first industrial visit, since me and my friends in Raffles College did an industrial visit to Indomie factory around two months ago. During this trip, I expected to see how dairy product industries go, how do they manage to be this big right now, and if they expanded their business. Learning new business strategies done by industrial visit has always been interesting to me because I want to be a businessman in the near future !

What factors should you consider when deriving an estimate of your lifetime value to a retailer? How can a retailer increase your lifetime value?

Personall, I purchase Starbucks Coffee twice a week. Let's say that I spend Rp 50,000.- every time I buy the coffee. In a year, I spend Rp 52,000,000.0-, so if I live 50 years from now, I will spend approximately 2.5 Billion Rupiah during my life time.

OBVIOUSLY, companies have to keep customer satisfaction as high as they can. Service businesses is definitely challenging. Communication between the employees and the customers have to be improved too. Promotion is definitely imporant here too. For example, sales discount, or promotion like buy one get one free or something is definitely attractive and interesting.

Explain the difference between the share of customers and customer equity. Why are these concepts important to marketers?

Share of customer is the share marketers get of the customer's purchasing in their produc categories.
For example my own consumption on coffee. 50% of the time I purchase coffee at starbucks, 10% on white coffee luwak, 10% on Kapal Api, and the rest on random coffee shops. This percentage always differs from one to another because it depends on the preference, and we understand that we people are all different in preferences.
To increase share of customers, firm can leverage relationships by offering greater variety to current customers. For example, Starbucks can add multiple new flavors to the coffee shop. Obviously, the advertising of the new flavors are going to be attractive to Starbucks customer.

Talking about customer equity, customer equity is the total lifetime values of your current and future customer.A company with high customer equity will be valued at higher price than a company with low customer equity.

Define marketing and discuss how it is more than just "telling and selling".

Marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and organisations obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging value with others. Value is the benefits to the customer in exchange of what they pay. The marketing process does not stuck only on the advertising. Marketing mix consists of 4P(s), which is Price, Place, Product, and Promotion. Telling and selling is only a small part of the promotion mix. Marketers observe, or research the trend that is happening at the interim, and deliver the product, or services to the customers. Understanding the needs of the customer is the hardest part here because trend changes everytime and marketers have to follow, so definitely, marketing is a deep word to talk about.
For example, Apple keeps on publishing their new product every year, while we can see the changes in features available.

INDOMIE FACTORY TRIP - 7

My Recommendation?

This whole trip was definitely fun and interesting for me because I got a chance to learn about Indomie further. I learned about the process of making the noodles from the beginning until the packaging process, how they promote their products, and how many new flavours that Indomie launched in the last few years. 

The most interesting part was when someone asked about the wax that the noodles made on the process of making the noodles that makes the water yellow. I was always scared of eating this noodles because people say that Indomie can cause cancer because of the wax and the MSG. However, I finally found out that what makes the water yellow is all the vitamins and the oil that comes from the noodles, not the wax that we people have been paranoid of. 

In my opinion, Indomie is one of the greatest product invented in Indonesia that has been really famous worldwide. The price is always affordable and the taste is always been good. However, I still believe that one day that Indomie can find out a new kind of seasoning without MSG that is way healthier for the consumers. 

INDOMIE FACTORY TRIP - 6

How Keen is Indomie to Social Media? 

Prior to these this era of technology, social media websites have been used by so many companies for advertising because the costs are relatively cheap and most of the people open their social media accounts multiple times a day. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Path are the most used social media websites that people use, but actually there are more social media websites that companies can use in their promotion, such as YouTube, DailyMotion, etc. 

Indomie uses all of the most used media to promote their products online. From their Facebook page, we can see their activities in posting pictures or quotes in their timeline. https://www.facebook.com/Indomie . Currently, there are 1.2 million likes on Facebook which is quite interesting because it is really effective in promoting their noodles. From their Instagram, they currently have around 6000 followers and 59 posts (@indomieid). 

The most interesting part is that the consumers even make videos that they posted on YouTube about Indomie, which are quite famous around the world. Free advertising done by the consumers are definitely interesting. 

Personally, I think that using the social media for the promotion is definitely one of the best way that companies can do because it is free, fast, and effective instead of paying so much money on the advertising on the newspaper and magazines. Additionally, most of the people nowadays are really into the social media websites/ applications, that they tend to open their accounts multiple times every single day.